Meet the Zoomers’ Martin Luther

He plays Minecraft and talks church history on YouTube—and he’s organizing a new mainline reformation.

Illustration by CT / Source Images: Getty Images

It’s October 31 in Denver. Snow is falling. A cutting wind makes the air feel much colder than it is. But nothing will stop Jake Boston, a Gen Z Episcopalian, from celebrating the holiday.

No, not Halloween—Reformation Day, when Protestants remember Martin Luther’s courageous choice to post his 95 Theses critiquing the Catholic church and launching the Reformation. Jake is reenacting that old story by tramping through the Colorado snow from mainline church to mainline church—60 in total—to post his own theses on their doors.

The lists, tailored to the seven American mainline denominations, critique their drift from orthodoxy into theological liberalism, challenging them to reaffirm the Resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, and much more besides.

And Jake was not alone. A group of 1,000 Gen Z mainliners committed to their historic denominations—part of a grassroots group called Operation Reconquista—were working across the country to do the exact same thing. By the end of Reformation Day, they claim, they’d mailed, emailed, or physically posted their 95 theses to every mainline church in the United States, all without funding or a full-time organizer.

When I first heard about this operation, I admit I was both intrigued and worried. On the one hand, the past year has seen a surprising number of Gen Z–led spiritual renewals, most famously the Asbury revival. Maybe this was a similarly hopeful development?

On the other hand, their branding use of sordid military history was reminiscent of the “manosphere,” a highly online movement capturing the imagination of many young conservative men. (“Reconquista” is a nod to the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from Muslim kingdoms, whom Christian Europeans commonly called Moors, and the group’s website uses martial language and imagery.) Like many manosphere influencers, Reconquista first got traction online, largely through a YouTube channel run by a young man who goes by the digital pseudonym Redeemed Zoomer, as well as a Discord server.

Redeemed Zoomer creates lo-fi explainer videos—with Comic Sans font and what he describes as “derpy” graphics—about Christian theology and denominations, some of which have racked up millions of views. When he’s not explaining history or ideas, he’s talking about mainline institutional renewal as he creates cathedral-centered cities in the world-building video game Minecraft.

Despite these superficial similarities between Reconquista and the manosphere, the substance is radically different. Redeemed Zoomer and his fellow activists aren’t interested in “going their own way,” accelerationist politics, or “trad LARPers”—as Zoomer put it in an interview on my podcast—who spend more time burning institutions down than rebuilding them.

Their interest is institutional renewal in the mainline church, and their method—as detailed in a video explaining their Reformation Day activism—is calling young, theologically conservative Christians to reform and revive the denominations that their Christian forebears sweat and bled to build. Beyond the Reformation Day event, this primarily looks like mapping theologically conservative mainline congregations and encouraging Gen Z peers to join and serve in those communities.

To that end, Zoomer continually reminds his audience that their enemies aren’t people; they’re the principalities and powers of darkness (Eph. 6:12). Even when he’s critical of progressive Christians, he’s never crass or vitriolic. In fact, he explicitly asks those watching his channel not to harass or attack the people he’s critiquing.

When I asked Zoomer if allusions to violent conquests might lead the group astray, he noted that the Bible, too, uses military metaphors for the life of faith (e.g., Eph. 6, Phil. 2:25, 2 Tim. 2:3). He hopes Reconquista will channel youthful energy, which may otherwise be spent on vacuous or outright noxious pugilism, toward noble ends.

As a safeguard, the group has invited older mainline pastors to join Reconquista, and members are encouraged to rise above the fistic fray, season their speech with love, and challenge each other when they fail to meet these goals. Reconquista wants to be characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, Redeemed Zoomer told me, not by the belligerent neo-pagan Twitter dunking of Andrew Tate wannabes.

Reconquista also rejects the racialized ugliness common in the manosphere and very online corners of the political Right. While their 95 theses to the Presbyterian Church (USA) state that “theology should not be done through a critical theory lens”—a sentiment I share, with some nuance—they also clearly anathematize racism and emphasize the importance of listening to the Global South. “The Mainline Church globally claims to want to elevate non-white voices,” one thesis says, “yet ignores the cries of repentance for theological liberalism coming from Church bodies in Africa and Asia, as is happening in the Anglican and Methodist communions.”

By contrasting Reconquista with the manosphere, I don’t mean to imply that it’s entirely male. The Episcopalian wing, which Redeemed Zoomer reports has seen the most success, is led by a young woman. But the group’s members are mostly young men, and Zoomer argues this is an asset in a time when—as is increasingly recognized even outside the church—young men are adrift in a predominantly progressive culture with no positive vision for masculinity and desperate to be connected to a mission that gives their lives purpose.

Progressive mainliners love to argue that progressive theology is the only way to make Christianity that mission for a young and progressive generation, Redeemed Zoomer says. But, speaking from experience, he disagrees, arguing that churches that liberalize to the point of abandoning orthodoxy have nothing distinctive to offer Gen Z.

Unchurched Gen Zers don’t need to go to a stodgy sanctuary to learn how to fly the rainbow flag. They can get that anywhere—without giving up Sunday mornings. To attract young people, and especially young men, the church must point Gen Z toward a divinely inspired, ancient purpose the secular world can’t offer: living for Jesus.

This is exactly what Zoomer experienced at age 14. Until his conversion, he says, he was a “secular leftist,” but at a small music camp led by a PCUSA professor, he encountered the beauty of Jesus through friendship, service to the poor, hymnody, and beautiful church architecture. The aesthetics of traditional churches weren’t merely a vibe for him—they became a window into the truth, goodness, and glory of the gospel.

Returning to his home in New York City, he found life by rooting himself in the Presbyterian tradition, singing hymns, studying the confessions, and taking the sacraments. This is the best way to integrate Gen Z men, like himself, into church life, he contends: engaging them in institutional construction.

He’s right. Gen X was cynical about institutions. Millennials, my own generation, deconstructed them. Gen Z may be the first generation to turn the tide, to renew, reform, and recover what past generations built.

Churches who build their congregation on critique—by perpetually deconstructing and disavowing the past or endlessly dunking on institutional leaders for not being “based” enough—will not survive and flourish long-term. Reformers like Luther did not only criticize; they also built.

If we want to see Gen Z—the most unchurched, secular generation in American history—join in the life of the church, we must actively involve them in institution building. We must invite and integrate them into a community of belonging rooted in history, orthodoxy, and tradition. This is especially the case if we want young conservative men to do more than ape Tate, as Matthew Loftus recently argued at CT.

Of course, there will be legitimate critiques of movements like Reconquista. Is its militaristic branding a strength or a hindrance? Is it driven by theology and liturgy, or merely an aesthetic vibe? Why not break away from heretical institutions that have already proven immune to reformation, as Luther himself did? Is this simply nostalgia for a golden age that never existed?

While these are important questions—and members of Reconquista have addressed many of them—they risk missing the lede: God’s Spirit is at work in Gen Z in surprising, beautiful, and encouraging ways.

They deserve our encouragement in turn. Left- and right-wing deconstructors will do their worst to distract these young builders from the labor at hand. My hope is that they will take up Nehemiah’s cry: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down” (Neh. 6:3).

Don’t come down, Gen Z. Build something that will last.

Patrick Miller is a pastor at The Crossing in Columbia, Missouri. He’s also the co-author of Truth Over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or the Elephant, and the co-host of the cultural commentary podcast Truth Over Tribe.

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Church Life

The Christian X-odus

Kate Lucky

As faithful Twitter users drop the platform, writers, leaders, and ministries adapt to a new social landscape.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

Scrolling through our Twitter X feeds over the last several weeks, we’ve seen familiar Christian names, from David French to Sam Allberry, signing off the platform. Many more are wondering aloud whether they want to stay much longer.

“Yet another person I really enjoy following left this platform yesterday,” tweeted Bible teacher Beth Moore, who’s amassed almost 1 million followers on the site. “I may not last long on here either. Shoot, I could close my account tomorrow.”

Since its acquisition by business mogul Elon Musk last year, the microblogging platform has changed more than its name. Its original verification system for journalists and public figures is gone, replaced by blue checkmarks (and a host of other perks, including “prioritized rankings”) for paid subscribers. In October, the platform stripped headlines from articles and announced that new users might need to start paying $1 a month in an attempt to combat bots.

For many loyal Twitter users, including Christians, these changes have made “the bird site” harder to navigate: less egalitarian and more pay-to-play, less a source of vetted news and interesting ideas and more a source of confusion.

In the last year, X has “hemorrhaged” users and advertisers. A Pew Research survey from May 2023 found that a majority of US users have taken a break from the platform in the past year; a quarter said they weren’t likely to use it in a year’s time.

In an analysis provided to CT, Pew found that American Twitter users who are members of historically Black Protestant denominations were more likely than evangelicals and Catholics to have taken a break from Twitter. And across all religious groups, only a quarter or less say it’s not likely they will use the platform a year from now.

Those who’ve stuck around have seen engagement on their posts drop, while spam, trolling, and vitriol remain.

“I think the worse that Twitter becomes, in the sense of user experience, the more that raises the question ‘Why do I put up with this anyway?’” said New Testament scholar and New York Times columnist Esau McCaulley. “To say that you have to pay for it or we're going to continue to make it worse and worse and worse … Now I have to start over and build my audience all over again. Is it worth it?”

On a platform that “rewards antagonism,” McCaulley said he has had to make a conscious effort to keep from retweeting and screenshotting opponents, avoiding “forming communities around mutual disdain.” Yet his presence on Twitter/X has also been part of his ministry, and he mourns the loss of his ability to share writing that might bless others.

The dilemma McCaulley faces—how to adapt as social media setups shift and audiences disperse—is shared by not only individual Christian commentators but also Christian organizations.

Digital communications managers and consultants for churches, ministries, and denominations are changing their social strategies in response not only to X’s struggles but also to the rise of short-form, vertical video on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube and plummeting traffic to outside links on Facebook.

They’re also asking deeper questions about their presence on the platforms in the first place and wondering how much time and money to invest. (As the audience engagement editor for Christianity Today, I include myself in this group.)

Justin Brackett is the founder of Digifora, a marketing agency that’s done work for churches like Joel Osteen’s Lakewood, ministries like The Voice of the Martyrs, and Christian leaders like Christine Caine.

Since he started doing social media professionally in 2007, “people have just assumed that these platforms were always going to benefit the user,” but “they’re all built for profits,” he said. “When they make these changes, they’re simply trying to increase their revenue.”

So he encourages clients to prioritize what they own—their websites, their podcasts—with social media in a supporting role. Constant “chasing of the algorithm” doesn’t do any good.

“The mass exodus of Twitter, the greatly suppressed reach of Meta … organizations right now, fourth quarter of 2023, have to start committing dollars and energy into their own platforms,” Brackett said.

Andy Jones runs Roundtree Agency, which provides marketing services for Christian nonprofits. He’s also advised clients to focus on media they can “own,” like email lists or even snail mail, as they seek to raise support for their causes.

When they do post on social, Christian nonprofits shouldn’t chase viral success, understanding that building donor relationships requires patient, clear, and dependable communication.

One of Roundtree’s clients, Langham Partnership, uses Instagram to share inspirational quotes from pastors it serves in the Majority World, then encourages followers to sign up for its daily email devotionals.

Another client, Geneva Benefits, which manages retirement assets for Presbyterian Church in America staff, uses social media to raise money for its relief fund—sharing the stories of a newly widowed pastor’s wife or a minister who got into a mountain biking accident.

“The relief fund has grown quite well over the last few years,” said Jones. “Part of that’s through social, but a lot of it is clear communication across all channels.”

And not all channels lend themselves to fundraising. “Twitter sounds like your uncle talking at a backyard barbeque three beers in,” he joked. It isn’t a place where an organization can easily “cast a positive vision for the world.”

Peter Slayton, manager of media relations and social media for The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), focuses his Facebook, X, Instagram, and LinkedIn efforts on promoting awareness and evangelism; connecting people with local LCMS congregations; and sharing denominational resources, like Bible studies.

“The mission has always come first,” he said. “When it comes to different platforms, the question becomes ‘Can we still remain faithful to who we are, to what our confession is, to who we believe Jesus is, and what we want the world to know about him?’”

Slayton has been working in social media long enough to remember when Facebook Live was the “shiny new thing”; now, his denomination is hiring another social team member to focus on making reels, trading fancy camera equipment for iPhones, iPads, and some microphones.

“One constant in social media is change,” he noted, but the consequences of that change aren’t predictably good or bad. LCMS has actually seen increased engagement on X this year; Slayton isn’t sure whether to attribute that to more conservatives joining the platform or an increase in spam accounts.

For Christy Chappell Belkin, director of public relations and editorial for the college ministry InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, “what you’re actually trying to accomplish” is getting college students off the apps and into embodied communities.

Student leaders run their own chapter accounts on Instagram and TikTok; they’re learning how to be faithful online just as they’re learning to teach Bible studies and plan retreats. The ministry provides some guidelines for them as they post: “Be humble. Point to the hope of Jesus. Be compassionate. Be truthful and accurate.”

While social engagement metrics are down for everyone, the clients Justin Brackett has seen garner success are focused on consistency, both in their posting frequency and in their messaging. Searches for “church” on Instagram, he says, too often bring up the same kinds of graphics in different color palettes. It’s not just “selling them on Sunday,” he insists, and “no one really cares about your next event.”

Instead, he thinks churches should be using social media to answer the questions followers are really asking—questions about grief and mental health and marriage and current events. “Why should I have hope today?” he asks. “We need to have an opinion.”

In today’s social media landscape, Christian thinkers who’ve long made a living by “having opinions” are wondering what’s next.

“I consider myself lucky enough to have gotten on social media at a time when words and thoughts mattered,” says Christian writer Hannah Anderson. “If I had to try to start my career today or even five years ago, it would never have happened.”

Contemporary social media, as she sees it, privileges charismatic entrepreneurs who perform well on camera, not necessarily writers “who excel in reflection or observation.” With that in mind, Anderson acknowledges, she needs to pivot—perhaps by building a platform of her own on the email-newsletter service Substack.

“I’m going to have to accept that Twitter is gone,” she said, “that what it did for me in terms of circulating ideas and meeting people isn’t going to come back.”

Scholar Karen Swallow Prior doesn’t know whether X was so beneficial for writers in the first place: “Increasingly, I came to realize that, especially on Twitter, people don’t read the articles (sometimes because of paywalls, but mainly because of laziness) and simply respond to headlines (which are increasingly clickbaity).” She hopes her Substack, The Priory, will serve readers “weary of the hot takes and the clickbait” who “hunger for something deeper and more substantial.”

Esau McCaulley won’t start a Substack; he’s already got a regular writing commitment with the Times. But he, too, is awaiting what’s next. “We don't own these social media spaces. We only rent them. And hopefully, we did some good ministry while they were healthy. And now we pack up shop and go to the next town; we could do some good work there as well.”

And Beth Moore? She might “pack up shop” and head to Threads. But she knows it won’t be the same.

“Most of my friends who have moved to threads still come over here to check Twitter for this or that,” she tweeted. “And why?? Because we know good and well we’ve had something here we haven’t been able to find anywhere else. Variety. So for now, I do things like block, mute, ignore and get on here less often. And still get to be in your good company. Fact is, I just flatly love a lot of people on here.”

Kate Lucky is CT’s senior editor of audience engagement.

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News

First Graduates of Persian Seminary Prepared to Serve a Traumatized Iran

Jayson Casper

London-based theological institute celebrates the academic success of 15 Muslim-background students, many of whom have suffered family rejection and political repression.

Courtesy of Pars Theological Centre

Iran’s Islamic republic is driving its citizens away from religion—and into trauma and depression. But as Christianity grows among a disillusioned public, the church is not exempt from complications, whether at home or in the extensive diaspora.

“Many Iranian Christians struggle with high levels of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, stemming from persecution but also from the general oppression of a totalitarian regime,” said Shadi Fatehi, associate director of Pars Theological Centre. “We see the marks in many of our students.”

Last month, the London-based institute celebrated its first graduating class.

Fifteen students completed the Farsi-language, three-year bachelor’s in theology degree. Accredited as an institution by the World Evangelical Alliance–associated European Council for Theological Education, nearly half of Pars’s over 600 students live in Iran, with almost a third in Turkey.

Its hybrid education model is primarily online, with a yearly residential program.

Located in 23 nations overall, the seminary launched the Pars Counseling Centre five years ago and began deliberately integrating it within the academic program. While the World Health Organization estimates five percent of the world population suffers from depression, peer-reviewed studies describe far greater numbers in Iran.

Between 15–31 percent of Iranians experience some form of mental disorder, with that number increasing to 37 percent in Tehran. Saeed Moeedfar, president of Iran’s Sociological Association, described a “terrifying despair” gripping society, as one in five prescriptions are issued for antidepressants or sleep-inducing medications. And a 2021 study found that political repression “contributes significantly” to mental health problems.

Meanwhile, a 2020 GAMAAN study found that nearly one million Iranians called themselves Christian, while only 32 percent of Iranians identified as Shiite Muslim. Officially, however, Iran puts that number at 95 percent.

Citing oppression and economic troubles, one anonymous secular Tehran-based NGO came up with a somewhat spiritual solution. Fighting a culture of mental health stigma, it combines both pro- and anti-regime patients within group counseling sessions. Alumni describe a “second household” atmosphere and readily volunteer to extend what they call “the chain of love.”

Pars similarly calls its theological model “the centrality of love,” centered around spiritual (love of God), personal (self), communal (church), and missional (world) formation. Many converts to Christianity suffer rejection from their family, Fatehi said, and new life in Christ does not automatically heal their wounds. In fact, given the nature of the Iranian underground church, it can even amplify them.

“Believers often suddenly find themselves as leaders in a house church,” she said. “But only having seen authoritarian models, traumatized people tend to exert controlling power over others out of self-preservation.”

Pars offers three courses in servant leadership, she said.

“Our background in Shiite Islam leads us to believe that the pastor represents the image of God and that we should accept his teachings without question,” said Samira Fooladi, a graduating student in Turkey. “My goal now is to develop healthy women’s leadership.”

Experts say the Iranian church is largely female, reflected in 57 percent of Pars students.

Despite growing up in a religious family in Isfahan, Fooladi followed her older sister to underground services during university studies in Tehran. Non-practicing herself, she compared the Quran and Bible while praying that God would show her the right way. She gave her life to Christ in 2000 at the age of 18.

Fooladi quickly became a cell group leader, but it was not until after her studies at Pars that she fully realized her network pastor was angry, possessive, and demanded full commitment to the ministry. She was forbidden from her prior passions for painting and sports, and she neglected her family—who were also coming to faith—in order to spend six days a week traveling throughout Iran to encourage scattered believers.

In 2012, Fooladi learned of Pars and began taking her first courses, and her theological perspective began to expand. Two years later, she and 13 others were arrested in a house church raid. She spent 12 days in prison before posting bail, but then fled the country in advance of the final verdict, before her name was officially registered for a travel ban.

Now married with a two-month-old daughter, she awaits asylum decisions in Europe while attending an international church in Istanbul. Fooladi has referred 35 others to study at Pars but dreams of returning with the gospel to Iran.

As does fellow graduate Behrouz Saki.

“The day will come when the kingdom of God can be proclaimed openly,” said the IT consultant at a Norwegian company in Oslo. “Until then, I continue to prepare.”

Saki fled Iran in 2003. As a 15-year-old son of an atheist political activist, he felt lost between the two cultures. An Iranian friend gave him a Bible, and in 2010 Saki placed his faith in Christ. Given his background, he first approached it critically.

“But as I read, I started noticing changes in my life,” Saki said. “I wanted to commit myself to the teachings of this book.”

He has been devoted to it since.

Enrolling in Pars in 2014, when it had less than 100 students, he chose the seminary over others in Norway due to its focus on “service, solidarity, and sacrifice” for Iranian believers back home. Praising the institute for its commitment to social justice, equality, and human rights, he also became a better husband and father over time.

But his initial motivation for pursuing studies was due to an ecclesial leadership failure.

After conversion, Saki joined his friend at a Persian-speaking church in Oslo. It was a transformative experience, during which time he met his wife and became part of a close community. But less than a year later, a pastoral power struggle split the congregation, halving attendance to around 50 people.

He praised the counseling aspects of Pars for his emotional health today.

Saki is now one of three preachers at his church, but the only one with a theological degree. He designs the teaching program of the church while virtually overseeing a 15-member cell group in Iran comprised primarily of converted members of his extended family.

Until the dream of returning to them can be realized in person, he is helping lead the Lutheran state church–affiliated body into a Free Church association—to “be the face of Jesus in Norway,” he said. But he is also pursuing an online MA in theological studies through Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS)—like Pars, also in Farsi.

Having begun its Persian Leadership Development program (PLD) in 2016, last June SEBTS celebrated its first graduating class, with 23 students awarded a bachelor’s degree in pastoral leadership. Of these, 19 will join Saki for graduate studies, with 104 students from 16 countries enrolled in academic pursuit.

“I’m so happy for the success of Pars,” said Kambiz Saghaey, director of the PLD. “I pray God will continue to bless them in laying a theological foundation for the Iranian church.”

Accredited theological studies are also available through Elam Ministries, which partners with Global University to offer a Farsi-language BA in theology. Currently there are 84 students enrolled from 10 nations, in addition to Elam’s network of trainers and evangelists inside Iran and neighboring countries.

Building Pars, however, has not been easy. Its founder and president Mehrdad Fatehi—Shadi’s father—left Iran in 1991 specifically to pursue theological education and lay a foundation for future seminary education. Along the way, seven of his colleagues were martyred, including Haik Hovsepian, superintendent of the then-legal Assemblies of God church in Iran.

Mehrdad Fatehi never returned home.

Graduating with a PhD from London School of Theology in 1998, he worked with Wycliffe Bible Translators and Elam in Bible translation and leadership training. But in 2010 he registered Pars as a legal entity, assembling a team to develop courses one-by-one. The first class was held in 2013. With 30 modules now available, he said even full-time enrollment would soon be possible. However, as most students are already deeply involved in ministry, they are encouraged to complete the program within seven years.

Yet none are trained without spiritual formation.

Every year, students are brought to a secure location in groups of 15–25 for one week of seminars, counseling sessions, prayer, and above all, fellowship. Given the surveillance nature of the state, Iranians learn to not trust one another. The paranoia that develops, Mehrdad Fatehi said, stunts the growth and mission of the church. Time together builds common faith.

“Iran is a deeply traumatized country,” he said. “And believers are not exempt.”

Therefore, in addition to standard academic offerings in New Testament studies, biblical interpretation, and systematic theology, Pars offers contextualized classes in crisis and trauma counseling, healthy Christian living, and marriage and the family. All are tied together through courses on the history of Iran and the history of its church.

As each evolves continually, so does Pars. And with enrollment surging there and elsewhere, a foundation of faith is being prepared to address a distressed nation. The runway has been paved; Shadi Fatehi said that the aviation infrastructure must follow.

“We are like a plane lifting off while the passengers are building it,” she said. “But with Iranians desperate for theological education, it is best to be deliberate.”

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This War Shows the Weakness in Just War Theory

Bonnie Kristian

Many Christian responses to the Israel-Hamas conflict lean on just war theory. It’s well intentioned—but deeply flawed.

Israeli armored personnel carriers move in formation near the border with Lebanon.

Edits by CT / Source Image: Getty Images

Just war theory is a venerable Christian tradition. It is the philosophical basis of international and American laws of war and undeniably noble in its intent. But it’s also deeply flawed, and the horrific Israel-Hamas war—to which many Western Christians have responded within a just war framework—demonstrates its limitations anew.

The basic elements of just war theory are two considerations: jus ad bellum (right to war) and jus in bello (right in war). As those phrases suggest in Latin and English alike, it’s about determining whether you have just cause to enter a war and whether you fight justly once the war is underway.

To answer those big questions, just war theorists ask many smaller ones. For jus ad bellum: Is war the option of last resort? Is it publicly declared? Is it declared by a legitimate authority? Is there a just cause? Is there a just goal? Is there a realistic chance of achieving that goal?

Then, for jus in bello: Is the use of force proportionate? Is sufficient care taken to avoid civilian casualties? Are prisoners of war treated humanely? Are war crimes punished by their own country? Is strategy set with an eye to de-escalation wherever possible and, ultimately, a just peace?

Just war theory isn’t monolithic, as probably no theory of this age and import could be, but the basics have been well established for centuries. A classic formulation comes from medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, building on the work of the early Christian thinker Augustine. You’ll find most iterations run much along these lines.

Just war theory is the intellectual ancestor of the Geneva Conventions—treaties dealing mostly with jus in bello questions that are central to the international law of war. The theory’s influence is also visible in how the US Constitution makes Congress, not the president, the legitimate authority to declare war. The rationale, as James Madison’s note taking at the Constitutional Convention put it, was “clogging rather than facilitating war [and instead] facilitating peace.” In other words, bring more scrutiny to the start of a war and it is more likely to be just.

Many later US laws of war, most notably the 1973 War Powers Act, are similarly informed by just war theory’s demands. Prominent modern Christian thinkers like C. S. Lewis and Reinhold Niebuhr also worked significantly within this tradition.

With such a lineage and so many queries in pursuit of justice, it may be hard to see why I believe just war theory is deeply flawed. Because, in one sense, there’s much to appreciate in this theory.

Indeed, compared to most alternatives—and history is bristling with examples, but last month’s obscene Hamas attacks should provide sufficient contrast—the dominance of just war theory in the modern order is a remarkable achievement of Christian thought.

Given a binary choice between this and “a world in which there are no limits on warfare even in theory, and in which what can be done may be done,” as pacifist Catholic writer Tom Cornell put it at Plough—well, give me just war theory every time. And insofar as governments have promised to abide by just war principles, as the US government has, they should be held to that standard.

The problem is that the standard is manipulable. My core critique of just war theory is not primarily about hypocrisy, though there is plenty of that. It’s not merely that adherents say one thing and do another—that the theory’s stringent standards are often ignored by those pledged to uphold them.

It’s that the standards aren’t all that stringent. Just war theory can all too easily function less as a limit than as a malleable justification for whatever we’ve already decided to do. It needn’t be flouted because it’s more flexible than it seems. Like the legal expert to whom Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), we often ask questions not to better love our neighbors but to justify ourselves.

“Ever since Just War theory was invented, every side of every Western war has used its language to justify self-interested claims, and done so with ease,” as Cornell observed. “After all, no government has ever announced its intention to wage an unjust war. … No victorious nation has ever attributed its success to its own evil deeds, nor have its leaders ever been indicted by an international tribunal for war crimes. That happens only to losers.”

Just war theorists in private life are not much better, Cornell continued. “Church leaders have had no better track record than the statesmen and generals,” he charged. “Throughout the ages, they have written a blank check to their governments on every side of virtually every war.”

There are exceptions, particularly in the jus ad bellum phase before a war begins. But I can’t think of a single US war in living memory in which a critical mass of American just war adherents deemed a war unjust in real time, before the verdict of history came in. And that category of adherents includes—at least in practice, even if they don’t know the theory’s name—almost every US evangelical who isn’t part of a historic peace church.

Is that because our government always gets it right? Or is it because the theory’s standards are too stretchy?

The historical record suggests to me that phrases like just cause and legitimate authority and sufficient care to avoid civilian casualties are not mathematical formulas but judgment calls. And we are prone to judge in our side’s favor, to decide that our choices and those of our friends are justified, whether or not a dispassionate (or, say, omniscient) observer would agree.

“Christians cannot support violence if they feel that such support renders them liable to theological censure, if they feel that they are not doing the right thing,” in the words of the French theologian Jacques Ellul. “Thus acceptance of violence necessarily involves theological views; but these are formulated ‘after the fact,’ after the decision for violence has been taken.”

In direct contravention of its purpose, just war theory becomes retroactive justification rather than proactive restraint.

This is how former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, even with a decade of hindsight, used just war theory to defend the 2003 invasion of Iraq—a preventive attack and regime-change project that notoriously included the use of torture, left hundreds of thousands of innocents dead, and almost eliminated ancient Iraqi Christian communities.

It’s how then-president Barack Obama invoked just war theory to explain his approach to foreign policy, while his administration used legislation from 2001 and 2002 to justify military intervention against groups in Yemen and Syria that did not exist when that legislation was written.

The more desperate a situation, the more tempting this kind of ethical elasticity will be. And the situation in Israel and Gaza is extremely desperate.

Unlike Hamas, of course, Israel did not start the current violence with a surprise attack on innocents. Israel is a partial signatory of the Geneva Conventions, has its own laws of war, and doesn’t fight in total disregard for civilian life.

But the Israeli ground assault on Hamas in Gaza, now ramping up, will be “fiendishly difficult,” as former US general David Petraeus told Financial Times. The most comparable modern fight may be the 2016–2017 Battle of Mosul, a fight against ISIS that took nine months—three times longer than anticipated—killed thousands of civilians and Iraqi troops, and displaced a million people. A compelling analysis at The Economist argues the war in Gaza will be even bloodier.

The unavoidable reality, as counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen explains at Foreign Affairs, is that Israeli ground forces will face “horrendously difficult tactical conditions, including room-to-room combat and tunnel warfare that would lead to massive casualties.” Kilcullen continues:

In Gaza, a key initial IDF [Israeli Defense Force] objective was to separate Hamas fighters from civilians. This was partly to protect the population and partly to identify legitimate targets. But this is one of the hardest aspects of urban combat, given that enemy forces are often dug in and embedded in noncombatant populations that, whether or not they support the adversary, become human shields. [In mid-October], Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesperson, stated that Israel’s “focus has shifted from precision to damage and destruction” in an effort to make Gaza untenable as a Hamas base. This suggests the IDF is placing less emphasis on avoiding civilian targets than before.

“We will do our best not to harm innocents,” Israeli ambassador to the European Union Haim Regev said shortly after Hamas’s murderous onslaught. “We are a democratic country. We are bound to the international law.” But Israel “will use all the means to eliminate Hamas and to rescue our people,” he said in the same breath. “You cannot fight against terrorists with your hands tied behind [your back].”

Tied, that is, by stringent application of the principles of just war. Less than a month in, the stretching of jus in bello has already begun.

Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.

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Theology

Why a Creator God Attracts Tibetan Buddhists to Faith

Interview by Angela Lu Fulton

Dreams and visions are bringing them to Christ. But how can church leaders keep them from backsliding?

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Unsplash / Pexels

Practiced mostly among Tibetan and Mongolian people groups, Tibetan Buddhism is probably best known for its spiritual leader and representative, the Dalai Lama, as well as the Free Tibet campaign.

Yet with 20 million adherents worldwide, the religion is practiced not only in Tibet but in Mongolia, northern Nepal, eastern Russia, northeast China, and Bhutan. Tibetan Buddhism, or Vajrayana, is one of the three main schools of Buddhism, combining basic Mahayana Buddhism philosophy with practices such as chanting mantras, meditating on mandalas, and yoga to accelerate the process of enlightenment. The religion is also mixed with Tibetan shamanism, known as Bon.

Chris Gabriel, who has worked in Asia for more than 25 years enabling and equipping Christians in creative access areas, shared with CT about Tibetan Buddhism, challenges to ministry to Tibetan Buddhists, and the need for discipleship. (CT changed Gabriel’s name due to his work in sensitive areas.) The interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.

When we think about Christianity, we often describe it by its theology. Is it similar for Buddhism?

In Buddhism, the fundamental thinking is that all roads can lead you to enlightenment. That means Buddha’s message is very accepting. Even though you have different schools, they aren’t always confrontational and don’t have strong distinctions from each other.

Take away all Christian connotations of “theology.” Most Buddhists never think about theology. Most of them are just following what their parents did, so it becomes their culture. When I talk to Buddhists, they have no clue why they do prostrations, why they make some of these merits [gaining good karma through good deeds], and sometimes what is even considered a merit.

So then why do they go to the temple? Well, for them it’s never been a question. They’ll say, “It’s just what we do. If we are Thai, if we are Tibetans, we go to the temple. We do the kora [walk around a sacred object], we spin the prayer wheels, and it’s helpful. And if we don’t do it, then there will be accidents or bad karma.” It doesn’t need to be much deeper theology than that.

What happens when Tibetan Buddhists become Christians and stop these practices?

A lot of times the Christians are blamed for droughts and landslides and other accidents because they were the ones who disrupted these practices and made the gods angry.

They often feel a lot of shame. They feel like they don’t belong anymore, like they are the guilty ones. They can even be blamed for their mom’s cancer because they have not treated the gods well. Christians face a lot of pressure from their family and the society.

The young believer may think, Maybe God forgot me, maybe he has given up on me or he’s not as strong anymore. This leads them to lose their faith. If the church is not stepping up, if the church is weak, then who do they turn to?

Then their parents are calling and asking them to come back. At least you can work in the field here. We will help you and provide you with food. And then they are back, cleaning the altar, praying, and following their parents to the temple. The pressure is enormous, so we often see backsliding among the Christians.

What do Tibetan Buddhists think of Christianity?

Some Tibetan Buddhists, in areas where they can speak more openly like Nepal, blame Christians for worshiping a “hungry” God. A lot of Buddhists would say, “Why can’t you do a little bit for our gods too? Why do you need to be so strict that all your worship is only going to one God?”

On the philosophical side, Christianity is very hard for Tibetan Buddhists to understand, because if you look at reincarnation and the Wheel of Life [which depicts the cycle of rebirth], in your next life, you could become a god or a demigod or a devil. Buddhists wonder, What makes your God different from our gods? Also, for Buddhists, living is suffering, so who would want to live for eternity? Nirvana is nothingness, so what is heaven?

It’s very hard for them to understand that we worship an almighty Creator God. But when they do understand that fact, it’s one of the strongest testimonies. If they’re not met by a healing, a dream, or a vision, then understanding God as Creator is probably the most common way Tibetan Buddhists come to Christ.

Why is the idea of God as Creator so powerful to Tibetan Buddhists?

In my study of theology, I was always taught that if you think of God as Creator, you think of his transcendence as something far away that’s too big for his creation. But when I discussed God as Father and Creator with Tibetans, they responded, “If God made the world, then of course he would like a relationship with me.” Suddenly, it becomes relational because he made them. They find a purpose because he made them. This is different from the Wheel of Life, where there’s never a purpose—just get away from suffering, get away from desires.

When you talk about God loving them, even if they don’t understand it, a lot of them do understand the feeling of I don’t need to be alone. If I don’t have work, if I get sick, then I have a God who actually cares for me. That speaks powerfully to both non-believers as well as believers. Seeing that Christians actually care for people and their God cares for them is a very strong testimony.

How common are dreams and miracles in leading Tibetan Buddhists to Christ?

It’s quite common. Miracles also happen in the Tibetan Buddhist world with non-Christians. For them, their whole spiritual world is full of it.

These miracles are a testimony that our God is active, that he cares for them, and he is more powerful than the other gods. Sometimes in a dream, Jesus or an angel speaks to them and points them to where they should go and who they should talk to. One Tibetan Buddhist woman said that in her dreams, she sometimes saw a light, while other times someone spoke to her. It took quite a few visions before she really started accepting.

After a miracle occurs, how do Tibetan Buddhists usually respond?

They think, This is good. Why would I say no to Jesus? Why do I need to understand more about what Jesus has done? For Westerners, we want to see a confession, we want certain steps done. But they are responding to God: You have done everything for me already, why would I say no?

I was shocked the first time someone said, “I went to church and I believed in Jesus because my dad believed.” “Did you know who Jesus was?” “No, I have no clue who he was. But my dad has always made good decisions. If he says he’s a believer and he follows Jesus, then I do too.” And that was her journey. Today she’s leading a church with her husband.

If you see your faith more as a relationship than a dogmatic theology, it becomes different. How well do I need to know you before I say I’m your friend? Or how much do I need to know a person before I like them? A lot of it is intuitive feeling and reading between the lines. They think, I can see Jesus is something good and I want to join that.

I think that is also why backsliding is very common with Tibetan Buddhists when their conversion is not rooted in understanding. When their relationship with God is weakened or forgotten or distractions come, then they give up because their faith is not built on a strong foundation.

How do you build a stronger foundation for these new believers?

Discipleship is very important. What mission workers can’t figure out is how to do that discipleship.

First of all, it’s so easy for them to say, “I learned a method or I got some knowledge so I can teach someone else.” The problem I see is the whole education system in Asia, where students just repeat what their teacher or what their pastor told them. They can answer a lot of these questions, but they don’t know what it means to them.

We want to make it practical. Instead of focusing on head knowledge, we are trying to make it more about the process. It’s easy to say God loves you, but what does it look like? How do I know it? It needs to be tangible. We talk about sin while still not understanding what sin is. If I talk about a broken relationship, everyone understands that. Those are some areas for us to work on.

We also work on getting Christians, both pastors and laypeople, to read the Scriptures more. When leaders don’t read the Bible consistently, it results in sermons that are random rather than systematic. It means they speak from their experience or from a verse they read that morning and preach about that. They don’t connect it to anything else.

I heard one pastor say, “We need to stop preparing our sermons during the worship service. We need to be part of the worship.” Most of them are preparing the sermon during the service, believing that God will give them something to say. They’re not planning on how to mature believers.

How can leaders help new believers who face pressures from their families?

It’s important to teach them the Bible and provide them with a basic understanding of who God is and how he loves them. We need to teach that even if they are facing challenges, it’s not all punishment. This is a very easy belief to slip into if you’re from a Buddhist background.

Even Christians think, I didn’t read the Bible enough, I didn’t pray enough so God is punishing me. So we ask, “Would you do that if you’re a good father? Of course he wants to spend time with you, but he doesn’t punish you because you’re not correct all the time.”

We also need to think a bit more about how we can encourage sharing in the church, including discussing life problems. How do we pray for each other, how do we listen to your doubts and catch them before they become too serious? It’s difficult because people feel shame for being weak in their faith. They think they shouldn’t tell anyone or else people will start pointing the finger and asking if they had this accident because they were being too cocky or because they sinned.

We need to get real with each other and say, “We all need help, we are on the journey together.” But that means changing attitudes and how we look at each other.

What is most encouraging to you about this Christian community?

I love to see the passion. Many of them are very good at sharing the gospel and thinking creatively about how to get into different areas. Tibetan culture is very exclusive as they don’t like outsiders. Still, so many of these believers are very keen on sharing the gospel and even going into these closed communities.

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Culture

‘All the Light We Cannot See’ Reminds Me to Look for God

Benjamin Vrbicek

The novel and Netflix show explore scriptural themes of light and dark—and the cosmic reign of Christ.

Aria Mia Loberti as Marie-Laure in episode 103 of All the Light We Cannot See.

My wife and I spent our honeymoon in St. Lucia, an island known for its two iconic mountains that rise from the Caribbean like majestic guardians. At breakfast one morning, with the mountains behind us, I remember asking my wife, “Do you think people who live here ever get tired of looking at them?”

Twenty years later, I’d answer my own question: yes. The grind of life acts like melatonin. We all grow sleepy toward creation and toward our Creator. And sleepy people, at best, miss much of what God has for us in this life. At worst, we can become so oblivious that we perpetuate great evil without realizing what we are doing.

Yet God has a way of using both beauty and tragedy like smelling salts, awakening us to realities we’d otherwise suppress or ignore. The beauty of a newborn or the shock of war can remind us to look around, to remember that there is more to life than the little we usually notice.

One practice that helps to keep my eyes open to the reality of God and his world is to reread my favorite novel nearly every year since it was published. The book is All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr’s World War II story, which won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted as a four-part Netflix miniseries that premiered this past Friday.

I’m still working through the series myself. So far, there are some changes from the book—mostly, I assume, for concision. But as I talk with friends who also love the book and are watching the series, they report enjoying the acting and the attempt to bring such a powerful, sprawling story to a big-budget production.

Doerr’s tale centers on Marie-Laure, a blind French girl hiding from German invaders, and Werner, a young man in the Hitler Youth. They’re brought together by the search for a diamond known as the Sea of Flames and by a radio transmission—the titular light is radio waves—each broadcast of which ends with the same line: “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”

These motifs of light and sightedness (and, conversely, darkness and blindness) ricochet throughout the novel, forcing readers to consider our assumptions about reality. Is all we can see all there is? Though Doerr doesn’t write from an explicitly Christian worldview, his use of light and blindness invokes unseen moral and divine reality.

In a pivotal scene where Marie-Laure and her father flee Paris, the father muses about the diamond, which some believe to be magical, even cursed. The rock, he thinks, “is only a piece of carbon compressed in the bowels of the earth for eons and driven to the surface in a volcanic pipe. … It can harbor a curse no more than a leaf can, or a mirror, or a life. There is only chance in this world, chance and physics.”

Marie-Laure has a more enchanted—and therefore more realistic—view of the world. Though she loses her physical sight, her other senses are heightened. As she eats a can of sliced peaches, for instance, the narrator says she’s “eating wedges of wet sunlight.” She is increasingly alive to God’s world, seeing creation in ways more profound than literal sight.

Werner, meanwhile, falls into an ethical blindness. As the German army moves through France, the war brings him geographically closer to Marie-Laure, but they grow further apart in their views of the world.

The war swallows Werner’s inquisitiveness. Conscripted into the German war machine, he adopts its unquestioning, instrumentalist mindset. “You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way,” an instructor tells him, and he does. But, to use biblical language, “thinking that way” leads to death (Prov. 14:12). Werner’s calculations of the sources of radio broadcasts will be used on the frontlines to triangulate the location of enemies. Soon, German soldiers retrieve equipment from broadcasters Werner locates—equipment freshly smeared with blood.

Doerr doesn’t use these terms, but his story is a study in what the philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book A Secular Age, called “the porous self” and “the buffered self.” Marie-Laure has a porous self, as Taylor contends premodern people typically did. To be porous here means to believe in realities outside oneself—and to believe that forces outside of us are not only outside. Like light waves, these outside forces can and do move around and even through us.

The porous self lives in what Taylor calls an enchanted world, one in which disease and health, famine and prosperity result from spiritual realities as much as physical causes and effects. The Bible assumes a porous world, one in which unseen spiritual forces affect our lives. Paul speaks this way, for example, when he describes us struggling against “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12).

But that’s not how we live now, Taylor argues. We live in a secular age where our default view of ourselves is buffered from outside forces. Or, in the words of Marie-Laure’s father, “There is only chance in this world, chance and physics.” Science can explain disease and famine, and diamonds are just rare clusters of elements.

If Marie-Laure is the porous self of All the Light, Werner begins as one of many buffered selves. But after a near-death experience, he begins to comprehend the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Tragedy opens his eyes to what he could not see, while the reader comes to understand the utter darkness in the buffered, secular thinking Werner leaves behind.

In interviews about the novel, Doerr often recalls the first moment he wanted to write a story involving radio. He was riding the subway when a man nearby began to lose reception on his phone and become irate. Doerr recalls being struck by the irony of it all: They were hurtling through an underground tunnel in a machine, while unseen light waves carried voices back and forth with a tiny radio transmitter and receiver to tall towers spaced miles apart above the earth. The caller was irritated by a small disruption, but he should have marveled that such communication could exist in the first place.

Doerr set out to write a novel that could re-enchant this dark view of the world. And as much as I love the book he produced, too often I find myself like that incensed subway rider. I can forget the truth of what poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.” And even though I am a committed Christian, I can function as though I am a buffered self, one able to determine my fate apart from outside constraints.

The folly of thinking this way can even creep into something as spiritual—or enchanted, if you will—as preparing to preach God’s Word. Sometimes I think that if I put in the time, if I read the right commentaries, and if I collect the right illustrations, then, like a machine, I’ll pump out a good sermon. My behavior betrays an assumption that leads to death: that the world is just chance and physics, and the Word is just words.

“The Christian life is about opening ourselves up to Christ, to become consciously porous to his cosmic reign,” author Tony Reinke wrote in a 2015 article for The Gospel Coalition. “It turns out enchantment is critical to Christian discipleship,” Reinke argued, because ours is a world enchanted by Jesus, “the image of the invisible God,” by whom “all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities” (Col. 1:15–16, ESV).

Each year I read All the Light We Cannot See for the same reminders: That I am a porous self in an enchanted world. That it is God in whom I live and move and have my being (Acts 17:28). That it is by beholding with unveiled eyes both the beauty and the tragedy of the Cross that I can be transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18). That God is the light I too often cannot see.

Benjamin Vrbicek is the lead pastor at Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the managing editor for Gospel-Centered Discipleship, and the author of several books.

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Theology

Your Calling Is Christ, Not Marriage

Annalisa Phillips Wilson

Paul’s advice to stay unmarried—like his advice for any circumstance—is about complete devotion to Christ.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Unsplash / Getty

It’s good to remain unmarried.

These words aren’t mine but the apostle Paul’s (1 Cor. 7:8). Yet despite their source, they’re not words we’re likely to hear enthusiastically preached from evangelical pulpits today.

I don’t recall being very aware of these words from Paul when I married young, just out of Bible college, where the faculty told girls they’d actually come for an “MRS degree” and gave classes on Christian family and marital responsibilities. In the years since, I’ve heard countless sermons on marriage, some describing it as the “pinnacle of creation,” others telling me that every woman’s “greatest joy in life” is being a wife and mother.

And my experience isn’t unusual. Church classes on marriage are de rigueur. Christians have reams of publications on marriage and traditional family values. Polling shows white evangelicals really do emphasize marriage and children in a way that most other religious groups do not: They think marriage is “important to living a fulfilling life.” And a recent CT article argued that nowhere does the Bible endorse long-term singleness that is not deliberately chosen for the sake of the gospel.

What would Paul make of all this noise about marriage? What would he think of our tendency to assume the experience of marriage is universal, our arguments that Christians should seek marriage, and the assumption that it’s an essential component of the life of faith?

He might wonder why we give so much attention to something that can compete with our devotion to the Lord. He might say: Stop talking so much about marriage—I think these singles will flourish if they stay unmarried.

Why is this so hard for us to hear today?

Part of it is our habit of forgetting who Paul was: a first-century itinerant Jewish teacher using scribes to write heated, long-winded, and sometimes crude letters to his disciples in between exalted visions. We instead cast Paul and the Corinthians in our own image.

But the options available to the Corinthians were not like ours. Nearly everyone got married at some point in the first-century world, and “not-yet-married-ness” was much rarer than today. Yet the pressures that led people to marry also meant that marriage was often involuntary and rarely lifelong or primarily romantic.

Marriage was not primarily an individualistic, romantic arrangement in the first century, but usually a social and economic necessity. Under Roman law, girls could marry at 12, and most were married before 20—a good paterfamilias wouldn’t wait too long before arranging a marriage.

Augustus had introduced new law codes that encouraged early marriage, quick remarriage, and increased childbearing. Sexual abstinence was impossible for many enslaved believers, who had no legal rights to their bodies, and many enslaved women ended up marrying their enslavers, likely with no say in the matter.

And while it was less common to never marry, there were always many people currently unmarried, and Paul’s instructions include them. There wasn’t vocabulary equivalent to our “singles,” but Paul addresses the unmarried in general. He has guidance for unmarried people of different ages, sexes, and relationship statuses (including the widowed and possibly the betrothed) but does not distinguish between different reasons for currently being unmarried.

Many unmarried Christians would’ve been women in their 20s or 30s—some estimate that over a quarter of Roman women were unmarried widows, often young women left single for decades after a brief teenaged marriage to an older man.

The gendered age gap in marriage also meant that men usually experienced a period of unmarried adulthood into their 20s or 30s. Slaves couldn’t legally marry, and their cohabitation arrangements required permission from owners, so there must have been some who desired marriage but did not or could not have it yet (if ever).

So some first-century Christians would have remained unmarried for long stretches and undoubtedly sometimes for reasons outside their control—though often very different reasons than those we see today. In short, neither first-century marriage nor first-century singleness was just like ours, so we shouldn’t be surprised when we find a mismatch between our circumstances and what the Bible directly addresses.

But we shouldn’t draw ethical and theological conclusions from that mismatch alone. Just because a biblical text doesn’t explicitly address our circumstances with our categories doesn’t mean our circumstances and categories are necessarily problematic. Silence doesn’t mean disapproval.

When we forget how distant we are from those texts and come to the Bible expecting quick, straightforward answers to our modern questions, we can manhandle and flatten God’s Word, forcing it to address our concerns. And the image we flatten it into will be ours: We imagine a Paul who wants to promote the value of marriage for its own sake, like we tend to do, or who would be worried about the changes in society that we find troubling.

However, just because these concerns aren’t explicitly addressed in the way we recognize or within our categories, we shouldn’t conclude that the text’s message is irrelevant to our situation. This isn’t an attempt to have my cake and eat it too—it’s a plea for handling the biblical text with care as the ancient, complex, and morally and culturally weighty text that it is.

So what was Paul’s message here?

As nearly all commentaries will tell you, Paul’s instructions are an apparent response to the statement in the opening verse of 1 Corinthians 7: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (KJV). The Corinthians have written to Paul, and this is likely a quotation or restatement of their position, one which uses a euphemism for sexual activity: Some believers think that (male) sexual abstinence is a superior moral practice. (Some translations, like the NIV, put the line in quotes to signal that it’s not Paul’s statement.)

Paul rejects the view that sexual abstinence is unconditionally, morally good. He explains that marriage can also be a morally laudable practice that abstains from uncontrolled and destructive sexual behaviour (vv. 2–5). He admits his own preference for remaining unmarried but recognizes that different believers have different gifts from God (v. 7). Some will be divinely equipped for marriage, others for unmarried life. God has given believers many ways to live for him.

Throughout the rest of the chapter, Paul considers many of these different ways: What if you find it difficult to live without a sexual partner? What if your spouse is an unbeliever? What if a partner leaves? What if you have plans to marry? What if your spouse dies? What if a believer is circumcised or uncircumcised or enslaved?

In every case, Paul says believers shouldn’t seek to change their status, because there is not just one way to live in the Lord. Conversely, because of that very truth, believers can also accept change. Enslaved people can use freedom if it comes. Single people aren’t sinning if they get married. None of these particular statuses or ways of life are said to be necessary, and change can be accepted, because what matters is our calling in Christ.

Some translations—like the NIV’s advice for every person to “remain in the situation they were in when God called them” (v. 20)—mask one of Paul’s central commands here. Verse 20 says each one is to remain in the calling with which you were called (my translation). In all circumstances, Paul teaches, believers must cling to their status in Christ and remain confident that this—not marriage, not singleness, or anything else—will save. While God has allotted us particular roles and circumstances, these can change; our consistent vocation is being in Christ.

So if we can live for God in every circumstance, why does Paul still say it is better to be unmarried (v. 8)? This is not an offhand comment but something repeated throughout the entire chapter. Paul’s concession (v. 6) is thought by many to mean that he sees marriage itself as an exception, not the norm. He later says that anyone without a wife shouldn’t look for one (v. 27) and he tells widows they will flourish if they stay unmarried (v. 40).

At one point he makes an outright comparison between the married and unmarried states and says that being unmarried is better (v. 38). He even entertains the possibility that marriage might be a sin—twice (vv. 28, 36)! Marriage isn’t sinful, he says both times, but we should notice that he felt the need to clarify this, perhaps because he was worried those reading his instructions could infer otherwise. That’s how strongly he makes the case for staying unmarried.

Paul gives several reasons for that case. One is the Christians’ position in a new eschatological landscape: Time has taken on a new character, and the present form of this world is passing away (vv. 29–31). All believers should continue normal life, but with a measured detachment that recognizes its transience. Even as we marry, grieve, celebrate, and work, we must not be overly invested in these activities.

Next, being married means accruing more of these transient commitments (v. 28). It brings new worries and concern to please a spouse, leaving a believer’s attention divided (vv. 32–35).

Given these two related rationales—the hope of a new form of this world and the concentration of this-worldly stuff in married lives—the unmarried have a practical advantage. There are simply fewer things competing for their attention, so Paul thinks they’ll find it easier to maintain undivided devotion to the Lord (v. 35).

But wholehearted devotion to Christ is Paul’s goal for all, not just the unmarried. Since the vocation to Christ applies to all believers, Paul attempts throughout the chapter to mitigate practical limitations and distractions for everyone.

He advises widows who want to remarry to find a fellow believer, perhaps because a spouse who shares your vocation will support it in practical ways (vv. 5, 39). For those already married, Paul proposes mutually agreed temporary celibacy to create times of undistracted ministry (v. 5). Perhaps Paul counsels those who “burn with passion” to marry because their sexuality threatens to consume them, dividing their attention like the married couples’ “troubles” do (vv. 9, 28).

The advice to remain unmarried is designed, then, to circumvent one particular set of complications altogether. The rationales given indicate its purpose: Singleness is for “the Lord’s affairs” and to “please the Lord” (v. 32). But notice how open-ended this is; Paul doesn’t specify purposes we might expect for unmarried Christians, like church work, serving others, or evangelism.

Here, again, history is helpful. First-century believers who decided to remain unmarried weren’t usually devoting their lives to church service in any formal sense. Though asceticism was practiced in widely varying ways at this point, there weren’t distinct, self-supporting communities like monasteries until centuries later. No matter how much time singleness made available for ministry, most of the unmarried would have had to find support within a household or through—in our terms—secular full-time work.

Furthermore, nowhere does Paul dictate that remaining unmarried is a permanent commitment. Many would have been powerless to make such a commitment, and even the few who could might have ended up getting married, something Paul recognizes. While Paul doesn’t want the believers to seek change for its own sake, his instructions still expect change to some degree. Again, our calling is to Christ, not our circumstances.

He asks unmarried believers to remain unmarried in the same way he asks married people to maintain married sex and in the way he advises the enslaved not to worry—as guidance on how to inhabit their current circumstances with allowance for future changes. Paul isn’t endorsing only singleness deliberately chosen for the sake of the gospel but singleness in general as something useful for the Christian life.

The attention we give today to marriage undermines Paul’s message. When some Corinthians suggested that one particular way of life was morally superior, he resisted because of his belief in the power of God’s calling. And if we carelessly advise people to prioritise finding a spouse, we risk giving the opposite of Paul’s advice: “Do not look for a wife” (v. 27).

Most of us will marry. Many of us will find sexuality and the realities of this world too cumbersome without marriage’s arrangements. Marriage is a proven and biblical way to address the embodied concerns of this life, and Paul’s words here are not all we need to hear.

Genesis reminds us that it is not good to be alone and that marriage has a foundational place in our present world (Gen. 1–2). With Ecclesiastes (9:9), I can say that there are few things better than enjoying life with my husband—even while I know that this can’t save. I hope you’ve seen, like I have, reflections of Jesus in many different marriages that mirror the one-flesh-ness of Christ and the church (Eph. 5:25–33).

But let’s hear Paul’s voice endorsing singleness clearly, without cushioning him with equivocation or drowning him out with a cranked-up canonical or contemporary chorus. We must resist the urge to domesticate Paul and instead echo his incessant refrain: Christ, crucified and risen.

I still want to hear sermons about how good marriage can be—but also about how incredibly painful it is for many, and how it can be a distraction from devotion to Christ, and how we’re all waiting for the new creation. We can rejoice in our families while stating unequivocally that Christ alone is our greatest joy.

And let’s talk about how lonely and weary singleness can be and consider, too, its joys and its rich gifts to the church. Let me tell you about unmarried Christians who have kept pastor-less churches going while working demanding jobs, about singles whose friendship has sustained me and my husband through hard times, and some who speak of Christ to places and parts of society that married life could never have taken them.

Let’s hope our unmarried friends who want marriage find it, but let’s also strengthen them with the knowledge that they already have what they need for faithfulness, pray that they’ll remain in Christ, and rejoice that so many do find fulfilment in him, even without marriage. Let’s have faith that it can be good to be unmarried, because Christ is very good.

Annalisa Phillips Wilson teaches New Testament at the University of Cambridge and WTC, both in the UK. She is contributing a chapter on 1 Corinthians 7 to the book New Testament Ethics: Hermeneutics, Texts, and Practice, forthcoming with Eerdmans in 2024.

- More from Annalisa Phillips Wilson

Theology

When 6 Churches Became 180: Philippines Shows Need for Resilient Congregations

Jason Richard Tan

The pandemic forced these ‘polymorphic’ churches to shift into house churches.

Worshippers wearing face masks stand far apart from one another to practice social distancing as they take part in Sunday service.

Ezra Acayan / Stringer / Getty Images

When the Philippine government imposed restrictions on public gatherings in early 2020 due to the spread of COVID-19, many small churches faced a dilemma: let go of their pastors or close their doors. These small independent churches heavily depended on physical gatherings to collect the tithes and offerings essential for their weekly finances. The abrupt shift was particularly detrimental to churches serving lower-income communities, especially as the shutdown in the Philippines dragged on for two years.

Many of these churches attempted to transition to online platforms for their weekly worship, but limited IT knowledge and internet access led to lost connections and frustration for pastors. In the Metro Manila district of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Churches of the Philippines where I belong, many of the 120 churches lost up to 30 percent of their members during the pandemic, and a few closed permanently.

However, some churches took a different path by embracing the house church model. This allowed churches to save money on rent and utilities, equip more church members to lead, and free up pastors to engage with families.

Six pastors in our district made this choice, and we witnessed a remarkable transformation in their ministry. Over the next two years, these six churches grew into a network of 180 small groups with an average of 8–10 people meeting regularly. This became the Simbahay House Church Network (simba means “to worship” and bahay means “house”).

When the Philippines fully opened up in October 2022, some of these churches chose to return to rented spaces or to construct better church facilities. Yet what sets them apart is the resilience they developed as they transitioned from one church model to another.

The COVID-19 pandemic serves as a stark warning to the global church. If a health emergency can disrupt congregational meetings, then future threats such as war, famine, or economic collapse could pose similar challenges. So the global church must not only familiarize itself with diverse church models but also be prepared to seamlessly transition to new ones when necessary.

Perhaps it is time for churches to adopt a polymorphic mindset in their approach to church ministry. Much like biological polymorphism, where birds exhibit different feather pigmentation variations, polymorphic churches must readily adopt different forms or types of church models to sustain their faith community and mission.

Church body versus church building

How can we adopt a polymorphic mindset? We begin by revisiting the true essence of the word church, or ekklesia, and understanding how contextual factors have shaped the various ministry models we have today.

Over centuries, the term church has evolved from denoting a “gathering of believers” to a “physical building or a place” such as a cathedral.

In Koine Greek and the first-century Greco-Roman context, ekklesia referred to an “assembly of people” gathered for diverse purposes, whether political, social, or religious. However, in the New Testament, it carries a specific meaning: the “assembly of the people of God.” The New Testament consistently uses ekklesia to signify the community of believers, not a physical structure, though this faith community often necessitates a meeting place.

In the New Testament, the ekklesia frequently met in the homes of their leaders, known as oikos, because they were not welcome in synagogues, according to Met Q. Castillo’s The Church in Thy House. Various passages distinguish between the faith community (ekklesia) and the place of gathering—in this case, the home (oikos):

Romans 16:5: “Greet also the church that meets at their house.”

Colossians 4:15: “Give my greetings to … Nympha and the church in her house.”

Philemon 1:2: “… to the church that meets in your home.”

When persecution intensified, believers sought alternative places of worship, such as caves and catacombs.

Over the first three centuries, the oikos, as a place of gathering, evolved into a larger, extended private home called domus ecclesiae, according to Emerson T. Manaloto’s Let the Church Meet in Your House! As political and social circumstances changed, the ekklesia transitioned to public buildings known as aula ecclesiae for regular meetings. In the 4th century, with the Roman Empire’s conversion to Christianity, the ekklesia gained state-funded places of worship called basilicas, which resemble modern megachurches.

The architectural evolution of the place of worship was influenced more by context than theology or Scripture. The reason local churches evolved from one model to another over time was in order to adapt to their context. Theological reflection may influence the details of architecture, such as direction, space, furniture, or colors, but generally, a place of worship is a product of culture and context.

The ekklesia or faith community is the kernel or core of ministry, while the church structure represents the husk or form embodying the believing community. This means various models—including house churches, megachurches, and institutional churches—may be changed depending on the context, none being inherently more divinely inspired or theologically superior.

Polymorphism in a Filipino context

For the Simbahay House Church Network, transitioning from a corporate church model that requires a building, paid staff, and board of elders to a house church model relying on volunteers not only saved money on rent and utilities. It also became a lifeline for their ministry: The church could allocate limited resources to support their pastors. With pastors freed from the weekly demands of sermon preparation and Sunday events, they had more time to spend with congregants, resulting in an increase of tithing during these visits.

Moving from one church model to another requires more than a change in structure. It requires a paradigm shift in ministry. We can look to these Filipino house churches as a case study on the changes they made.

1) They shifted from preaching to facilitating learning.

Instead of preaching a sermon, pastors taught house church leaders how to read from the Bible. During the gatherings, these leaders involved everyone, including children, in reflecting on and sharing their thoughts about the passage. This approach not only made Scripture understandable but also enabled church members to develop an organic approach to theological reflection.

“I was amazed that my eight-year-old child can have such a deep insight about Jesus’ parable,” said one church member. “And the great thing about it is that he does not only remember the story, but he also knows how to apply it too.”

2) They moved from teaching members to mentoring them and demonstrating leadership.

Our pastors realized that it was better to show leaders how to facilitate and lead a small group by example than having them memorize techniques. For instance, the pastors showed the leaders how to administer Communion, and at the next gathering, the leaders were the ones leading Communion.

To provide continued spiritual accountability, the pastors met with house leaders online each month to address potential false teachings or leadership issues.

3) They transitioned from focusing on church activities to emphasizing spiritual and social accountability.

The pandemic placed limitations on everything from social gatherings to members’ incomes. This prevented churches from running church-based events like men’s fellowship meetings or youth sports events. Yet COVID-19 also led to an increase of needs in the community, including food, baby formula, medicine, and transportation. As the house churches began to meet these needs, they developed deeper connections with both those inside and outside the church.

The simplicity of these house churches allows for deeper and more authentic relationships. Members of the house churches connect and engage with each other more naturally, as life allows them, through eating together, helping each other at work, or listening to each other’s stories.

4) They shifted from having paid workers to having bi-vocational ministers.

While some pastors decided to leave the city and return to their hometowns during the pandemic, others decided to stay and look for jobs so they could continue to serve the church as full-time volunteer pastors. This opened up new opportunities. One pastor started small groups in the workplace that would study the Bible or hold worship services. He now oversees 90 of these marketplace faith communities in 16 companies that he made connections with.

As mentioned before, as the pandemic restrictions eased, some of these churches continued meeting as house churches while others chose to adopt their previous corporate church model and reconvene in rented spaces. One congregation decided to build a new church building.

Those who decided to meet in a church building felt their congregation needed more structure, as parents wanted more stability for their children. Meanwhile, the pastor mentioned above decided to leave his church and serve as a corporate chaplain overseeing marketplace faith communities.

Although these churches are few, they serve as a prime example of a polymorphic church community capable of transitioning from one form to another.

As instability intensifies each year, the global church cannot afford to be a bystander. It must be agile, discerning, and adaptable to various contexts. The most significant threat to the church may come from within, particularly the institutionalized church perpetuating an institutionalized faith. When churches become more concerned with preserving tradition than meeting the world’s needs, they become an enemy of the gospel.

Mission strategist Henry Venn believed indigenous churches should be characterized by three “selfs”: self-supporting, self-government, and self-propagating. Missiologist Paul Hiebert proposed a “fourth self” to the list: self-theologizing. Yet given the current challenges, a fifth one might be necessary: self-evolving.

Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” It’s hard to believe he intended to establish an inflexible institution rather than a dynamic movement. Only an adaptable movement can effectively fulfill the command to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19).

Jason Richard Tan has more than 20 years of ministry experience in the Philippines, serving as a ministry coach and mentor for pastoral leaders, church planters, mission leaders, and pastoral trainers. He also serves as a ministry strategist for the Global Proclamation Commission for Trainers of Pastors and as a consultant for global ministries.

- More from Jason Richard Tan

News

Meitei Christians Caught in Middle of Manipur Violence

Surinder Kaur

Thousands of majority believers lost homes and churches in India’s worst ethnic conflict this year. Yet they feel “overlooked and despised” by both sides.

A woman walks through the wreckage of a building that was set on fire and vandalised by mobs in Khumujamba village.

Edits by CT / Source Image: Getty Images

On May 3 of this year, Koireng (identified only by his first name) first heard reports that an unidentified group had lit a famous war memorial on fire. As a Meitei pastor in Churachandpur, a district in the Indian state of Manipur, Koireng grew alarmed by the news that the arson had escalated into widescale property destruction.

Tensions had been steadily increasing for weeks between the Kuki-Zo, a predominantly Christian tribal community, and the Meitei, Manipur’s biggest and largely Hindu ethnic group. Over the next couple of weeks, mobs burned down dozens of homes, sending hundreds of Churachandpur residents into the forest for refuge, and retaliatory attacks killed two civilians on the first day of violence. (The current total death toll is at least 180, after six months of intermittent violence.)

At the beginning of the year, a number of different communities, including Christian Meiteis, Hindu Meitis, and Kuki-Zo Christians, resided in Churachandpur, which was also home to 21 Meitei churches, said Koireng, the pastor of Evangelical Free Church of India (EFCI) in Churachandpur.

Koireng had heard that Kuki-Zo mobs spared churches, though not Meitei Christian homes.

“They recognized the Christian Meitei houses from the non-Christian houses, but they equally burnt down all the homes,” said Koireng, who quickly called all his church members to gather inside his church to stay together.

The attacks outside of Churachandpur and in the capital city of Imphal were fomented by Meitei mobs and led to thousands of Kuki-Zo fleeing their homes and the region. Since then, Christians like Koireng have found themselves in a bind: They cannot turn to either their ethnic kin or their fellow Christians for any sense of solidarity.

“We are the real victims—not the Kuki-Zo Christians or the Hindu Meitei community,” said O. Kumar, the president of Meitei Christian Churches Council Manipur (MCCCM).

Few churches spared

During September’s United Nations General Assembly, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) organized a virtual side event discussing the violence in Manipur. As the event concluded, one Hindu Meitei leader from India, who had not been invited to speak, interrupted the meeting, claiming that the panelists had painted a one-sided picture of the crisis.

“Meitei churches have been completely vandalized and razed in Kuki-Christian dominated areas in Churachandpur, right on the first day [of the conflict] before violence broke out in Imphal,” alleged Khuraijam Athouba, the spokesperson of the controversial group Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity.

Athouba’s claims were later widely disseminated on social media by trolls and bots, which also harassed the event’s moderator, Wissam al-Saliby (the WEA’s Geneva director), and panelist Florence N. Lowe, who founded the North American Manipur Tribal Association and is of Kuki-Zo ethnicity.

Almost 250 Meitei churches have been burned down or vandalized in Imphal Valley since May, says Kumar. But in Churachandpur, churches were spared that night and have been protected since.

As referenced above, Koireng also disputes Athouba’s assertions. After a harrowing night, on the morning of May 4, “I received a call from the army that they are coming to escort us out of Churachandpur and all of us will be evacuated—both Christians and non-Christians,” said Koireng, whose house was among those burned down and who has lived in a relief camp since.

Kuki-Zo mobs burned down 172 Meitei Christian houses, said Witamsinbou Alex Newmai, a Naga tribal Christian who coordinated relief for the Meitei Christians. He was disturbed by the meticulousness of the destruction, pointing to the fact that the mob used bulldozers and JCBs (large machines used for digging and moving earth) to level the homes.

“At least the Kukis had the burden to give safe passage to Meiteis before things went out of their hands, as the mob culture was growing on both sides. Unlike the Kukis who were massacred in the valley, there was no casualty of the Meiteis in the hills,” he said.

Simon Raomai, the president of All Manipur Christian Organisation (AMCO), says he has visited Churachandpur several times since May and has not seen any destroyed churches.

“Out of anger and rage, some miscreants might have just thrown a stone and broken a window glass or hit against the wall, but the church buildings still stand strong unharmed,” said Raomai.

He also advised against unconfirmed claims of churches being looted, burned, or vandalized.

‘The Kuki-Zo disowned us’

Meitei Christians only make up 1.06 percent of Manipur’s population, according to a 2011 census, whereas Meitei Hindus are 53 percent of the total population.

Since the May attacks, the community has been bullied by non-Christian Meitei, who often troll them on social media, issuing death threats if they don’t convert back to Hinduism or Sanamahism, the Meitei indigenous faith, says Newmai. Being Christians, they are perceived as being on the Kuki-Zo side and accused of violence against their own (Meitei) community.

“We’re not considered part of Hindu Meitei anymore and we’re not Kuki-Mizo tribals either,” said Kumar. “We see ourselves as independent, but Meitei Hindus label us as Meitei tribals, trying to highlight our differences from the Meitei community and likening us to Kuki tribals.”

These prejudices led to Meitei militants attacking Meitei Christian churches across the hill districts. In the month of May, Arambai Tenggol and Meitei Leepun, two militant Meitei groups, attacked and vandalized Meitei Christian churches, said Kumar.

“Most of the Meitei people thought that all Meitei Christians supported the Kukis, so they wanted to completely wipe out Meitei Christian churches,” said a leader on condition of anonymity.

The situation was further complicated by the fact that Meitei churches often included people from multiple ethnic backgrounds, including the Kuki-Zo, and were financially supported by Kuki-Zo and Naga Christians.

“They thought that we would be more faithful to the Christian tribals rather than the Meiteis,” he said.

“But when it came to owning us as their brothers and sisters in Christ, the Kuki-Zo disowned us, and we had to move out of the Kuki-Zo dominated area,” said Kumar.

Peace talks

In Imphal, leaders from the Naga Christian Forum and legal experts from the Meitei Hindu community have come together to establish the “Forum for Justice,” a movement dedicated to promoting peace and justice in the region.

In September, 20 leaders convened, including 9 representatives from the Naga Christian Forum advocating for Meitei Christians.

“Because I am a Naga Christian, I can move around freely in the hill districts and the valley districts and initiate peace talks,” said Simon Raomai, the president of AMCO, who spearheaded the discussions.

Raomai provided a comprehensive account of the Christian Meitei perspective, outlining their hardships and presenting startling statistics, including the shocking revelation that 249 Meitei churches were either vandalized or set ablaze.

The attorneys involved were taken aback by the staggering figure, expressing their lack of awareness regarding the extent of the damage.

“We are trying to advocate for our Meitei brothers and hoping to engage influential figures in conveying our feelings to the Hindu Meiteis and the fanatic groups,” said Raomai.

The Forum for Justice is scheduled to convene once again on November 6 and plans to include Meitei Christians for their third meeting.

Nowhere to go

Before the May violence, more than 10,000 Meitei Christians lived in Churachandpur. Today, around 700 Meitei Christians live in relief camps because they have nowhere to go, said a Meitei Christian leader who did not want to be named for security reasons.

Meitei Christians cannot return to their homes in Imphal or the valley districts without risking pressure from Hindu Meiteis to renounce their faith. (Even within the camps, Meitei Christian leaders say militant Meitei groups have threatened both lay Christians and pastors to pressure them into recanting their beliefs.) Relocating to Manipur’s hilly areas is also off the table, because the state is divided on ethnic lines due to previous civil war.

In the aftermath of the May violence, Santi Kumar, a Meitei Christian from Churachandpur, suffered the devastating loss of his home and the Sunday school he ran for 30 years with his wife, Oinam Ibemcha, when mobs burned it to the ground.

Deeply attached to his hometown, Kumar was nevertheless reluctant to return.

“We are working on peace talks, and when they reach an amicable conclusion, we will go back to Churachandpur because that is our home,” said Kumar.

Currently Kumar’s family and several other Meitei Christians from hill districts continue to reside in relief camps, holding on to hope that the government will take proactive steps to initiate peace talks with Kuki leaders.

They also anticipate the government’s support in rebuilding their homes.

As of September 1, more than 58,000 individuals (up from 38,000 in May) were living in 351 relief camps across Manipur, including more than 22,000 children and 300 people over 80 years old. About 24,000 camp occupants are from the Meitei community, though it is unclear how many of these are Christians.

“We are wondering who will help Meitei Christians,” said O. Kumar. “When relief comes for Christians, it all goes to Kuki Christian areas. When relief comes for Meiteis, it all goes to Hindu Meiteis, who allege that we Christian Meiteis are getting help from Kuki-Zo Christians.”

“It is a double blow for us, as we are overlooked and despised on both sides.”

- More from Surinder Kaur

News

Wire Story

Sudanese Protestant Church Destroyed in All Saints’ Day Bombing

Morning Star News

The largest and second-oldest church in Omdurman was hit following similar bombings targeting local evangelical schools.

Courtesy of Province of Sudan / Edits by CT

At least two Christian buildings were bombed last week amid fighting between rival military factions in Sudan, sources said.

Last Wednesday, a Sudan Evangelical Presbyterian Church building in Omdurman came under heavy shelling from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) that left its worship structure in ruins, two sources with the church said. Local Christian leaders also confirmed the shellings in statements to CT.

The Church of Our Savior was the largest church in Omdurman and hosted worship for both Evangelical Presbyterians and Episcopalians.

When the bombs struck around 9 p.m., several people were at the compound, which includes an orphanage, but were unhurt. The church building was hit three times, causing severe damage especially to its roof. Everything inside was destroyed, including Bibles and hymnbooks, one of the sources said.

“Pray that peace comes to Sudan,” said one of the church members who escaped injury.

According to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), “Most of the buildings registered to the Evangelical Church in the surrounding area were confiscated under the rule of Omar al-Bashir, and the latest shelling took place approximately three weeks after similar bombings of the Evangelical Commercial School and the Evangelical Secondary School, both in Omdurman.”

Courtesy of the Province of Sudan

The Church of Our Savior prior to last week’s bombing in Omdurman, Sudan.

CSW reported that the Protestant church was the second-oldest in Ombdurman after the Coptic Church.

Anglican Bishop Ezekiel Kondo told CT that the church, which “has been a place of worship for the last 81 years or so,” was destroyed on All Saints Day. “We will update you as to who might be responsible for this barbaric act between the two warring parties,” he stated. “Thank you for your continued prayer for peace in our beloved Sudan.”

Christians on social media in Sudan also condemned the attacks.

A Roman Catholic building in the Al-Shajara area south of Khartoum was bombed on Friday, injuring at least five nuns, according to a local source whose name is withheld for security reasons.

It was unclear whether the SAF or the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) battling each other targeted the structure, and at this writing Morning Star News was unable to independently confirm the reported shelling.

The RSF has been fighting the SAF since April 15. Fighting between the RSF and the SAF, which had shared military rule in Sudan following an October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, leaving more than 10,000 people dead, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Another 5.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to fighting, according to an October 15 statement by the United Nations.

Christian sites have been targeted since the conflict began in April. On May 14 unidentified gunmen attacked the Coptic Orthodox Church of Mar Girgis (St. George) in the Masalma area of Omdurman, according to Egyptian news outlet Watani.

The RSF on May 15 seized a central Khartoum cathedral after having evacuated the Coptic Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary near the presidential palace on May 14, converting the latter into a military headquarters, according to Egyptian news outlet Mada. CSW advocates noted the RSF had reportedly been intimidating and harassing those in the church for a week before forcing them to leave.

The RSF reportedly stormed buildings of the Episcopal church on Khartoum’s First Street on May 16 to use as a strategic base, Mada reported, adding that a vehicle belonging to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Khartoum was stolen at gunpoint.

On May 3, a Coptic church in Khartoum North was attacked, after the evangelical church in the same area was bombed and partially burned in April, CSW reported.

On April 28, the Gerief Bible School in the Gerief West area of Khartoum was bombed. Its worship auditorium, halls and student dorms were destroyed, an area source told Morning Star News. On April 17, gunmen raided the compound of the Anglican cathedral in Khartoum, the United Kingdom-based Church Times reported.

The SAF’s GeneralAbdelfattah al-Burhan and his then-vice president, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, were in power when civilian parties in March agreed on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition in April, but disagreements over military structure torpedoed final approval.

Burhan sought to place the RSF—a paramilitary outfit with roots in the Janjaweed militias that had helped former strongman Omar al-Bashir put down rebels—under the regular army’s control within two years, while Dagolo would accept integration within nothing fewer than 10 years. The conflict burst into military fighting on April 15.

Both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds while trying to portray themselves to the international community as pro-democracy advocates of religious freedom.

Following two years of advances in religious freedom in Sudan after the end of the Islamist dictatorship under Bashir in 2019, the specter of state-sponsored persecution returned with the military coup of October 25, 2021.

After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government had managed to undo some sharia provisions. It outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death.

With the coup, Christians in Sudan fear the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law. Abdalla Hamdok, who had led a transitional government as prime minister starting in September 2019, was detained under house arrest for nearly a month before he was released and reinstated in a tenuous power-sharing agreement in November 2021.

Hamdock had been faced with rooting out longstanding corruption and an Islamist “deep state” from Bashir’s regime—the same deep state that is suspected of rooting out the transitional government in the October 2021 coup.

Persecution of Christians by non-state actors continued before and after the coup.

In Open Doors’ 2023 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian, Sudan was ranked No. 10, up from No. 13 the previous year, as attacks by non-state actors continued and religious freedom reforms at the national level were not enacted locally.

Sudan had dropped out of the top 10 for the first time in six years when it first ranked No. 13 in the 2021 World Watch List.

The US State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report states that conditions have improved somewhat with the decriminalization of apostasy and a halt to demolition of churches, but that conservative Islam still dominates society; Christians face discrimination, including problems in obtaining licenses for constructing church buildings.

The US State Department in 2019 removed Sudan from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom” and upgraded it to a watch list. Sudan had previously been designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.

In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its Special Watch List.

The Christian population of Sudan is estimated at 2 million, or 4.5 percent of the total population of more than 43 million.

Additional reporting by CT.

- More from Morning Star News

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In this series

When we think about Christianity, we often describe it by its theology. Is it similar for Buddhism?

What happens when Tibetan Buddhists become Christians and stop these practices?

What do Tibetan Buddhists think of Christianity?

Why is the idea of God as Creator so powerful to Tibetan Buddhists?

How common are dreams and miracles in leading Tibetan Buddhists to Christ?

After a miracle occurs, how do Tibetan Buddhists usually respond?

How do you build a stronger foundation for these new believers?

How can leaders help new believers who face pressures from their families?

What is most encouraging to you about this Christian community?

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Church body versus church building

Polymorphism in a Filipino context

1) They shifted from preaching to facilitating learning.

2) They moved from teaching members to mentoring them and demonstrating leadership.

3) They transitioned from focusing on church activities to emphasizing spiritual and social accountability.

4) They shifted from having paid workers to having bi-vocational ministers.

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Few churches spared

‘The Kuki-Zo disowned us’

Peace talks

Nowhere to go

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